Comics!
Z's wonderful anniversary gift (along with wonderful-in-other-ways chocolate) was a bunch of comics recommended to him as interesting takes on the superhero thing; geekturnedvamp also gave me a large number at Vividcon, so I thought I'd do a comics-only review this time.
Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming, Powers: I read Who Killed Retro Girl? a while back, and enjoyed it. Then I read the more recent books, and I rediscovered cops Deena Pilgrim and Christian Walker - and how much do I love those last names? "Pilgrim" is definitely in the John Wayne tradition, a woman who likes to hit first and curse later, while Walker is a seeker - after what, who knows? As non-powered cops in a world of superheroes, they investigate various crimes, from the slaughter of college kids dressing up in costumes (Role Play) to the gory death of two out of three members of an elite team sponsored by the military-industrial-entertainment complex (Supergroup). There are hate crimes against superpeople (Anarchy) and plenty of intergroup tensions; the Justice League would never make it in this world. One of the later volumes, a dialogue-free "Quest for Fire"-type exploration of violence in protohumans, is a big fat failure, but points for trying something new.
Steve Darnall & Alex Ross, Uncle Sam: This is the ringer of the bunch, without much relation to superhero comics (though maybe, by invoking the power of icons, it's closer than I first thought). An old homeless guy, smelly and disoriented, wanders the streets outside a political convention, shifting between pasts he couldn't possibly have experienced and a present no one would want to - is he really Uncle Sam, the embodiment of America, or just a delusional old man? He travels through America's worst mistakes and a few of its better hopes, offering a searing indictment of America's behavior from the perspective of a believer in its dream. I can't say I enjoyed this an awful lot, but I cried at the end.
Brian Michael Bendis, Alias: Jessica Jones is a PI in the Marvelverse, one with superpowers who put away the cape and mask. Both of those attributes - PI and freak -- make it somewhat difficult for her to get along with the cops; her bad attitude and barely-functional alcoholic status don't help either. Like Powers, Alias focuses on the stresses of mutant/human interactions, and contains a lot of graphic violence and intense but not graphic sexual situations. In the first volume, Jessica comes across an explosive secret about Captain Marvel which ends up putting her morals in danger and her life in question, or maybe it's the other way around. In the second book, Come Home, she investigates the disappearance of a maybe-mutant girl from a small town in which the dominant church preaches anti-mutant hatred. The Underneath brings Jessica back to NYC, where publisher Jonah Jameson has a strange connection to the Spiderwoman who breaks into her apartment, then disappears, leading Jessica into a perverted underworld dependent on the exploitation of superpowered people. The Secret Origins of Jessica Jones explains why she's not a caped crusader any more, and the story is much darker than anything you probably expect. Jessica's self-hatred and consequent self-destructiveness are wrenching, but I rooted for her and I'll be following her further adventures in the subsequent title The Pulse.
Garth Ennis et al., The Pro.: What if an alien/otherdimensional something-or-other gave superpowers to a broke prostitute with a mewling infant in tow? I think the point was that superheroes don't have much to do with the problems people face in real life, but I didn't really need all those exposed nipples and curses to believe that, nor did I think that sodomizing an abusive john so severely that he needed a colostomy and ripping his lower jaw off was a good way to use those new powers. And sure, it's not particularly heroic to go up against Big Evil when you're invulnerable - big shocker there - but the narrative undercuts that argument when it makes some of the "good, clean" superheroes vulnerable enough to die. Indeed, comics have been making heroes defeatable for a long while without the need for this type of lecture. If you want sex with your superheroes, read Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex," instead, or maybe just check out the SSA.
Warren Ellis et al., The Authority, Book One: Relentless: This time, the twist is that the superheroes are determined to change the world for the better, rather than letting humanity make its own decisions when not threatened by supervillains. At least that's the announced twist, but most of the book is occupied by the superteam going after villains their own size, so I can't say much about how that's going to work out yet. Jenny Sparks, a British blonde who controls electricity, is the team leader; Apollo is a sun-powered Superman stand-in; Midnighter is his Batman-esque lover (yay!); the Engineer is a woman with nanorobots for blood, who apparently doesn't mind showing her nipples in her fighting costume of liquid metal skin but draws the line at labia (um, so to speak); the Shaman/doctor is a mythic figure of what seems to be Earth magic; Jack Hawksmoor is an urbanist - really, he gets his power by connecting to cities; and Swift is a flying woman whose precise powers remain unclear to me. They call Sparks "the spirit of the twentieth century" when they introduce everybody's epithet, but like Twentieth Century Fox that now seems a bit dated, so I'm going to ignore it unless future volumes give me evidence that she's really stuck in an earlier era's mentality. Fun, worthy of further reading, but I'm reserving ultimate judgment to see if they really do start interfering with normal human governance, which I'd find extremely interesting.
Mark Millar et al., The Ultimates, vol. 1: Super-Human: This was the disappointment of the bunch, I'd have to say, though my lack of knowledge of Marvel canon assuredly hampered my appreciation. The story follows a new government-sponsored superteam, including Bruce Banner as the no-longer-Hulk who's in charge of trying to create more soldiers with Captain Marvel's powers. Betty Ross was a shrew - I thought her portrayal was frankly misogynist - and this, along with the other team members' harassment of Bruce for continuing failure in his project, lead Bruce to make a really, really bad decision (three guesses as to what it is, and the first two don't count). Thor's cameo as hippie environmentalist was engaging, and the volume ended with a very disturbing fight between Jan and Hank Pym, a married couple who can shrink and grow, respectively - and gee, aren't the gender politics of that a total surprise? If I'd liked the characters more, I would have been desperate to find out what happened next with the Pyms, but as it was, I've discovered something much better.…
J. Michael Straczynski et al., Supreme Power: Contact: Now this is the good stuff. More extreme than any DC Elseworlds, this Marvel title asks a great series of "what if" questions: What if the government, showing a modicum of sense, took young Kal-El from the humble farmers who found him and raised him up to serve his country under the focus-group-chosen name Mark Milton? What if Bruce Wayne were black and lost his parents to a hate crime? What if the Flash really did have corporate sponsorship? (Okay, that last one is not as interesting, but I'm all about the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel, so it's all good. [ETA: Te explains that the other main character is a redo of Hal Jordan.] I see from my research that this is actually an update of Marvel's Squadron Supreme, which explains a bit.) I adored this. Just the expression on young Mark Milton's face, wrapped in the American flag, every instinct striving for good but also telling him that the world isn't exactly the way his masters tell him - I'm in heaven. The next collection is due in October, and it can't come too soon. The one complaint I have is that I think it's stacking the deck a little to have Kyle Robinson's parents killed in a hate crime. It would be narratively better, I think, if it were even ambiguous why the white killers acted. However, I'd have a lot of sympathy for his racially focused patrolling anyway; maybe he's more broadly appealing if his protect-black-people-only stance comes from a clear instance of deadly racism.
Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming, Powers: I read Who Killed Retro Girl? a while back, and enjoyed it. Then I read the more recent books, and I rediscovered cops Deena Pilgrim and Christian Walker - and how much do I love those last names? "Pilgrim" is definitely in the John Wayne tradition, a woman who likes to hit first and curse later, while Walker is a seeker - after what, who knows? As non-powered cops in a world of superheroes, they investigate various crimes, from the slaughter of college kids dressing up in costumes (Role Play) to the gory death of two out of three members of an elite team sponsored by the military-industrial-entertainment complex (Supergroup). There are hate crimes against superpeople (Anarchy) and plenty of intergroup tensions; the Justice League would never make it in this world. One of the later volumes, a dialogue-free "Quest for Fire"-type exploration of violence in protohumans, is a big fat failure, but points for trying something new.
Steve Darnall & Alex Ross, Uncle Sam: This is the ringer of the bunch, without much relation to superhero comics (though maybe, by invoking the power of icons, it's closer than I first thought). An old homeless guy, smelly and disoriented, wanders the streets outside a political convention, shifting between pasts he couldn't possibly have experienced and a present no one would want to - is he really Uncle Sam, the embodiment of America, or just a delusional old man? He travels through America's worst mistakes and a few of its better hopes, offering a searing indictment of America's behavior from the perspective of a believer in its dream. I can't say I enjoyed this an awful lot, but I cried at the end.
Brian Michael Bendis, Alias: Jessica Jones is a PI in the Marvelverse, one with superpowers who put away the cape and mask. Both of those attributes - PI and freak -- make it somewhat difficult for her to get along with the cops; her bad attitude and barely-functional alcoholic status don't help either. Like Powers, Alias focuses on the stresses of mutant/human interactions, and contains a lot of graphic violence and intense but not graphic sexual situations. In the first volume, Jessica comes across an explosive secret about Captain Marvel which ends up putting her morals in danger and her life in question, or maybe it's the other way around. In the second book, Come Home, she investigates the disappearance of a maybe-mutant girl from a small town in which the dominant church preaches anti-mutant hatred. The Underneath brings Jessica back to NYC, where publisher Jonah Jameson has a strange connection to the Spiderwoman who breaks into her apartment, then disappears, leading Jessica into a perverted underworld dependent on the exploitation of superpowered people. The Secret Origins of Jessica Jones explains why she's not a caped crusader any more, and the story is much darker than anything you probably expect. Jessica's self-hatred and consequent self-destructiveness are wrenching, but I rooted for her and I'll be following her further adventures in the subsequent title The Pulse.
Garth Ennis et al., The Pro.: What if an alien/otherdimensional something-or-other gave superpowers to a broke prostitute with a mewling infant in tow? I think the point was that superheroes don't have much to do with the problems people face in real life, but I didn't really need all those exposed nipples and curses to believe that, nor did I think that sodomizing an abusive john so severely that he needed a colostomy and ripping his lower jaw off was a good way to use those new powers. And sure, it's not particularly heroic to go up against Big Evil when you're invulnerable - big shocker there - but the narrative undercuts that argument when it makes some of the "good, clean" superheroes vulnerable enough to die. Indeed, comics have been making heroes defeatable for a long while without the need for this type of lecture. If you want sex with your superheroes, read Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex," instead, or maybe just check out the SSA.
Warren Ellis et al., The Authority, Book One: Relentless: This time, the twist is that the superheroes are determined to change the world for the better, rather than letting humanity make its own decisions when not threatened by supervillains. At least that's the announced twist, but most of the book is occupied by the superteam going after villains their own size, so I can't say much about how that's going to work out yet. Jenny Sparks, a British blonde who controls electricity, is the team leader; Apollo is a sun-powered Superman stand-in; Midnighter is his Batman-esque lover (yay!); the Engineer is a woman with nanorobots for blood, who apparently doesn't mind showing her nipples in her fighting costume of liquid metal skin but draws the line at labia (um, so to speak); the Shaman/doctor is a mythic figure of what seems to be Earth magic; Jack Hawksmoor is an urbanist - really, he gets his power by connecting to cities; and Swift is a flying woman whose precise powers remain unclear to me. They call Sparks "the spirit of the twentieth century" when they introduce everybody's epithet, but like Twentieth Century Fox that now seems a bit dated, so I'm going to ignore it unless future volumes give me evidence that she's really stuck in an earlier era's mentality. Fun, worthy of further reading, but I'm reserving ultimate judgment to see if they really do start interfering with normal human governance, which I'd find extremely interesting.
Mark Millar et al., The Ultimates, vol. 1: Super-Human: This was the disappointment of the bunch, I'd have to say, though my lack of knowledge of Marvel canon assuredly hampered my appreciation. The story follows a new government-sponsored superteam, including Bruce Banner as the no-longer-Hulk who's in charge of trying to create more soldiers with Captain Marvel's powers. Betty Ross was a shrew - I thought her portrayal was frankly misogynist - and this, along with the other team members' harassment of Bruce for continuing failure in his project, lead Bruce to make a really, really bad decision (three guesses as to what it is, and the first two don't count). Thor's cameo as hippie environmentalist was engaging, and the volume ended with a very disturbing fight between Jan and Hank Pym, a married couple who can shrink and grow, respectively - and gee, aren't the gender politics of that a total surprise? If I'd liked the characters more, I would have been desperate to find out what happened next with the Pyms, but as it was, I've discovered something much better.…
J. Michael Straczynski et al., Supreme Power: Contact: Now this is the good stuff. More extreme than any DC Elseworlds, this Marvel title asks a great series of "what if" questions: What if the government, showing a modicum of sense, took young Kal-El from the humble farmers who found him and raised him up to serve his country under the focus-group-chosen name Mark Milton? What if Bruce Wayne were black and lost his parents to a hate crime? What if the Flash really did have corporate sponsorship? (Okay, that last one is not as interesting, but I'm all about the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel, so it's all good. [ETA: Te explains that the other main character is a redo of Hal Jordan.] I see from my research that this is actually an update of Marvel's Squadron Supreme, which explains a bit.) I adored this. Just the expression on young Mark Milton's face, wrapped in the American flag, every instinct striving for good but also telling him that the world isn't exactly the way his masters tell him - I'm in heaven. The next collection is due in October, and it can't come too soon. The one complaint I have is that I think it's stacking the deck a little to have Kyle Robinson's parents killed in a hate crime. It would be narratively better, I think, if it were even ambiguous why the white killers acted. However, I'd have a lot of sympathy for his racially focused patrolling anyway; maybe he's more broadly appealing if his protect-black-people-only stance comes from a clear instance of deadly racism.